Lying some 90 miles west of London in the Wiltshire countryside, Stonehenge is perhaps the world’s most awe-inspiring ancient stone circle. Older than the Great Pyramids and the Roman Empire, the origin of its story began some 9,000 years ago.
I had the chance to visit Stonehenge during my first visit to England, but Jackie and I had decided not to go this time – it just did not fit the itinerary and we visited Avebury instead. Imagine our pleasant surprise when we discovered “The World of Stonehenge” exhibit at the British Library.
A place of worship, meeting, burial and wonder, what Stonehenge represents has changed throughout its history. Transcending its landscape, Stonehenge stands for the generations of people who have made and found meaning from this enduring place in a changing world.
The first activity around Stonehenge happened over 9,000 years ago: three tree trunks were raised by hunter-gatherers close to where the stone monument would later be built. Like totem poles, they may have marked events that celebrated important people and places. Those living in Europe between the end of the last Ice Age (10,000 years ago) and the first farmers (6,000 years ago) lived successful lives by hunting, gathering and fishing.
Once farming spread from Europe to Britain around 4000 BC, communities in Britain and Ireland redefined their relationship with nature and the land. Farming, introduced by European migrant communities, replaced the old ways of hunting and gathering.
The remains of a feast held close to Stonehenge around 3900 BC, offer a rare glimpse of exchanges between hunter-gatherers and their first farmer communities. Those gathered ate farmed beef and hunted venison. Chemical analysis shows that the two groups came from different places and their meat was prepared in different ways. The area of Stonehenge served as an important meeting place and a turning point for society. As a coming together of worldviews, languages, customs and traditions, the remains of this shared meal mark the end of thousands of years of a hunter-gatherer way of life.
By 3500 BC, the wider landscape around Stonehenge was being used for religious devotion by farming communities. Observations of the sun played a role even at this early stage. A monument known as a curses was built with glistening white chalk sides stretching for 3km east to west, enshrining processions and the sun’s passage. Discovered in 1723, this huge rectangular enclosure was first thought to be a Roman chariot racecourse – cursus meaning racecourse in Latin. Visible via its ditches and banks, the cursus is still a key aspect of the landscape today.
The larger sarsen stones, which give Stonehenge its distinctive silhouette, were raised around 2500 BC. More than 80 massive sarsen stones, each requiring at least 1,000 people to transport, were brought from their source on Marlborough Downs, 40 km to the north. This effort required unprecedented communal labor, patience and planning. It undoubtedly involved injuries and deaths, and took generations to complete. The finished monument of massive and finely dressed sarsens was unlike anything ever seen across Europe. The building of the Avenue (thought to be the processional route the monument was approached) about 4,400 years ago confirmed Stonehenge’s sacred status.
The sarsens enshrined an important solstice alignment within the fabric of the monument. the axis of the stones at its center marked the position of the rising midsummer and setting midwinter sun.
For hundreds of years, Stonehenge became a place where the sun’s course was observed and celebrated. it signaled the changing of the seasons, including the end of winter, a meaningful moment for farming communities. Large gatherings and celebrations were held here.
From about 1900 BC, burying people with valued objects on sacred land became the dominant way of expressing cultural and spiritual meaning across Britain and Europe. At Stonehenge, hundreds of burial mounds were raised at this time for the illustrious dead, forming the densest concentration of burial mounds in Britain. The objects that mourners selected for the grave prepared souls for life beyond this world. They were markers of identity, ethnicity and success, but they also expressed hopes, desires, failed ambitions and long-distance pilgrimages.
About 1700 BC, the continental European tradition of placing metal objects in hoards without bodies begins in southern England. The focus on monument building and then burial started to be replaced by the desire to possess and sacrifice bronze and gold objects. The sarsen stones were inscribed by people with carvings of new, treasured objects. This bold act may have bordered on iconoclasm, infusing the ancestral stone monuments with the social, economic and religious importance of valuable offerings. The carvings are still visible today.
About 1500 BC, the influence of the Stonehenge region begins to wane. The stone circles still used in parts of Britain and Ireland no longer attracted large gatherings. The great acts of building and reimagining that had characterized Stonehenge ceased as offerings of metal valuables became the most popular way to contact spirits and gods in the natural world. The monument may have fallen into disrepair as expressions and cultural and religious authority began to shift. Power moved to long-distance connections with the continent and trade and exchange of metal and exotic materials.
By 1000 BC, monuments and burial mounds were rarely raised, while home and hearth took on new symbolic and political importance. Big ditches and banks expressed control over valuable pasture, livestock and the means of producing wealth. Defended villages and forts followed.
After 2000 years of history and mythology surrounding Stonehenge dating back to 3000 BC, a new kind of monumentality had arrived.
